I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

Every now and then I read a blog post that melts my heart. I truly feel the pain, anguish and anger of the writer. I may not always agree with the writer’s point of view, but I empathize with the writer’s pain nonetheless.

Reading Peter Gleick’s January 5 blog post here at Forbes.com, I experienced that empathy in full force. Gleick’s global warming beliefs are misguided and unsupported by sound science, but I nevertheless empathize with his pain and frustration that few people seem to agree with him. A person of thinner skin than me might be offended by Gleick’s frustration-induced rant, but I believe the best remedy is truth and understanding. Accordingly, I understand Gleick’s pain and I will present some truths that might ease Gleick’s anguish if he listens to them with an open heart and mind.

Gleick sets the tone for his blog post in the very first sentence, where he begins his column by stating, “The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011….” Here, in the first eight words of his column, Gleick unwittingly reveals one of the primary reasons why he is so wrong in his dire warnings of a human-induced global warming crisis. Gleick and his fellow global warming alarmists are the ultimate climate change deniers.

They present changing climate as unprecedented and unavoidably harmful. They act as if the climate never changed before now. In reality, however, the earth’s long-term, mid-term and short-term climate history is defined by frequent and substantial climate change. Of course, as Gleick states, “The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011”! When was the last time the Earth’s climate was not undergoing some change? Please, global warming alarmists, stop denying climate change!

Gleick finishes his opening sentence by asserting, “a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world.”

That is quite a bold, unsupported statement. Just what were those extreme weather events? Gleick doesn’t say. Perhaps we can speculate.

It certainly wasn’t hurricanes, as Ryan Maue at the Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies documents that global and U.S. hurricane activity has been remarkably quiet for the past few years. During 2009, global accumulated tropical cyclone energy reached a record low, and has remained abnormally quiet in the two-plus years since.

It certainly wasn’t tornadoes, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports 2011 continued a long-term trend in declining frequency of strong tornadoes. Yes, there were some strong tornadoes in 2011, but there are strong tornadoes every year. The only thing climatically remarkable about the 2011 tornado season is that the relatively few strong tornadoes that did occur happened to beat the odds and touch down more often in urban areas than is usually the case. Unless Gleick is arguing that global warming somehow causes hurricanes to wickedly target disproportionately urban areas, tornadoes like hurricanes are becoming less of a threat during recent decades as the planet has modestly warmed.

It certainly wasn’t drought, as multiple peer reviewed studies report global soil moisture has consistently improved during the past century as the planet has warmed. (See, for example, this study.) Yes, some droughts are going to occur somewhere on the planet each year, as they always have, but cherry-picking one of the increasingly less frequent droughts that still do occur does not constitute evidence that global warming is causing more extreme weather events.

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James Taylor, senior fellow for science denial at the Heartland Institute, wants you to believe that the extreme weather events of 2011 were not particularly noteworthy. Unfortunately for him, the facts prove otherwise.

First, here’s an excerpt from an article in Scientific American entitled “NOAA Makes It Official: 2011 Among Most Extreme Weather Years in History:”

“The devastating string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit the United States this spring marks 2011 as one of the most extreme years on record, according to a new federal analysis.

Just shy of the halfway mark, 2011 has seen eight $1-billion-plus disasters, with total damages from wild weather at more than $32 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Agency officials said that total could grow significantly, since they expect this year’s North Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1, will be an active one.

Overall, NOAA experts said extreme weather events have grown more frequent in the United States since 1980. Part of that shift is due to climate change, said Tom Karl, director of the agency’s National Climatic Data Center.”

So, according to the NOAA, James Taylor is engaging in science denial. But of course, the NOAA analysis is restricted to extreme weather events in the United States. What about the rest of the world?

Well, there’s this fact from a recent article in the Guardian (“Weird weather around the world sees in 2012″):

“Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies, now estimates that losses from natural disasters totalled $380bn in 2011, nearly twice as much as the previous record set in 2005.”

So, according to Munich Re, James Taylor is engaging in science denial again.

Then there’s this, according to Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground website:

“I’ve been a meteorologist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen a year like 2011 in terms of extreme weather events.”

And there’s this from a story on the Voice of America website entitled “US Sets Extreme Weather Records in 2011: Events consistent with long-term global warming trends”:

“Twelve weather-related disasters accounted for $1 billion or more each in economic losses, a new record, according to Chris Vaccaro, spokesman for the National Weather Service.

We’ve seen historic events of nearly every weather category,” says Vaccaro. “So in terms of snow storms, and hurricanes and floods and droughts, all of these events this year ranked in the top three or even the highest ever recorded.

The extreme weather affected millions of people, claimed 1,000 lives, resulted in 8,000 injuries and totaled more than $52 billion in economic losses. The most costly, according to David Brown, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was the year-long drought that continues to grip southern plains states.”

So how is it possible that James Taylor missed all of this news? The most likely explanation is that he didn’t miss any of it. Instead he just doesn’t choose to acknowledge these inconvenient facts.

You see, James Taylor is a PR agent for the fossil fuel industry, and he’s desperately trying to confuse the public about the scientific issues relating to climate change. Read his weekly blog at Forbes for a few weeks and you’ll see that he doesn’t actually ever present scientific evidence to support his assertions. His strategy on behalf of his oil and coal company clients is to try to lawyer the argument–his tactic is to distort, exaggerate, and/or fabricate information in the hope of undercutting support for the creation of sensible public policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The important facts are easy to establish:

1. According to the NOAA, 2011 was a record year for extreme weather events in the United States.

2. According to the annual natural disaster report produced by Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary, “The world endured a very active year in 2011, marked by a series of devastating natural disaster events. Extraordinary severe weather outbreaks in the United States spawned a record number of tornadoes, damaging winds and destructive hail. Major flooding covered vast areas of Southeast Asia, while floods also impacted parts of Australia, North America and South America. Hurricane Irene made landfall in the United States, the first U.S. landfalling hurricane since 2008. Ten additional tropical cyclone landfalls occurred worldwide.”

3. James Taylor and the Heartland Institute are in the business of representing the interests of industry groups. Previously they worked for Big Tobacco and tried to misrepresent the health risks associated with smoking. Now they are playing the same game on behalf of the fossil fuel industry–they actively engage in science denial in an effort to hinder or delay environmental policy. In other words, James Taylor and his coal and oil company bosses put their narrow financial interests ahead of the greater public good.

In summary, this is a typical bit of science denial from James Taylor. He happily ignores the facts and hopes that you will too.

I don’t normally respond to the posts by James Taylor — reading them makes my head explode. They are written as though from a completely different universe — some parallel universe where up is down, left is right, and global warming isn’t happening…. whew (though a careful reader of this post by Taylor will note that he accidentally acknowledges global warming is occurring). But since I’m the entire target of this rant, I thought I might offer a minor comment or two:

He says I’m upset because so few people agree with me… Hmm, 97-98% of all climate scientists (of which I am one, and James Taylor is not) agree with me — climate change is happening, and it is happening because of human activities. Maybe no one at the Heartland Institute agrees (though they are paid not to), but I like the company I keep better.

I will ignore the completely scientific nonsense that comprises the rest of his post, except to note the fine response by “cyruspinkerton” who sets Taylor straight about extreme events in 2011. Taylor must not read the news, or the science, either.

I wonder, however, if Taylor would publish the list of who really DOES fund the Heartland Institute. It seems to be a secret — no information is listed on their website about actual contributors of that $7 million budget that they use to deny the reality of climate change (and previously, the health effects of tobacco — their other focus). And their 990 tax form doesn’t say either. [By the way, while my Forbes posts reflect my personal opinion and not the opinion of the Pacific Institute, all of the Pacific Institute's financial records are public.]

A month ago James Taylor wrote an article about “Climategate 2.0″ in which he argued for openness and transparency in the debate around climate change. What follows is the comment I left, a comment to which Mr. Taylor never replied. I believe it’s relevant to re-post part of it here in light of Mr. Taylor raising the topic of Heartland Institute funding and your subsequent comment.

—–

Mr. Taylor makes the case that “Climategate” highlights the importance of making open and transparent the science and policy debate around climate change. I agree that it is undoubtedly in the public interest for all parties engaged in the scientific and public policy debate to be honest and forthcoming.

There is a problem with Mr. Taylor’s argument of principle, though. If he argues for an open and transparent science and policy debate as a matter of principle, then the responsibility for openness and transparency falls on all parties to the debate.

For instance, Mr. Taylor works for the Heartland Institute as a senior fellow for environment policy. The Heartland Institute is heavily involved in the debate around climate change. According to their website, the Heartland Institute “has assembled a team of leading scientists and economic experts to participate in the production of books, videos, a monthly public policy newspaper, events, and other public relations activities.” Their goal is to influence both the scientific and public policy debate with respect to global warming.

If we accept Mr. Taylor’s case for openness and transparency as a matter of principle, then we should expect the Heartland Institute to be forthcoming about funding sources and associations and contacts with industry groups and organizations. If Mr. Taylor really believes as a matter of principle that the climate change debate should be open and transparent, shouldn’t he also call out the Heartland Institute for their refusal to be forthcoming about their corporate and foundation donors? Shouldn’t Mr. Taylor also criticize the Heartland Institute for their unwillingness to document their connections to and contacts with industry groups, organizations and individuals who stand to profit from the free-market environmentalism that the Heartland Institute advocates?

Commenter “cyruspinkerton” cites meteorologist Jeff Masters to bolster his viewpoint. Ironic, considering that when anybody doubting the idea of man-caused global warming cites a skeptic meteorologist, a chorus of the opposition howls that such meteorologists lack the requisite expertise in climate science.

Peter Gleick’s last sentence in his comment is pretty much what sends the entire notion of man-caused global warming over the cliff of credibility, because his and others’ 20-year+ fixation with marginalizing skeptic scientists and skeptic speakers is such an obvious indication that they do not have confidence in the IPCC’s ability to support itself. The public is not told where skeptics are wrong, we are told to ignore them because they’re on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry.

Problem is, we have yet to see a solitary bit of evidence to support this accusation. Sure, practically every pro-global warming book author and article writer says skeptic opposition mimics old tobacco industry tactics, but who do they end up citing to prove this? All the accusation repetitions ultimately filter back to anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan, who himself never bothers to show us his single bit of smoking gun evidence in its full context, or bothers to say where or how he got it. Think about it for a moment, without this one reason for us to ignore the skeptic scientists, we would then be obligated to listen to them, because that is the responsible thing to do.

So, it’s not up to James Taylor to show us who funds the Heartland Institute, it’s up to Gleick, Gore, Pachari, Oreskes, Mooney, Romm, Gelbspan or any others who want to give it a shot: Stop with the guilt-by-association garbage, SHOW US YOUR SPECIFIC PROOF THAT MONEY WAS GIVEN TO SKEPTIC CLIMATE SCIENTISTS IN EXCHANGE FOR FALSE FABRICATED CLIMATE ASSESSMENTS!

If these folks continue failing to do this, everyone will ultimately realize that we do not have skeptics and the fossil fuel industry conspiring to confuse the public, it is the opposite; a cadre of well-financed, well-organized enviro-activists engaging in character assassination in support of a rather small amount of pro-global warming scientists, with the goal of trying to confuse the public into believing the issue is settled.

Commenter “cyruspinkerton” cites meteorologist Jeff Masters to bolster his viewpoint. Ironic, considering that when anybody doubting the idea of man-caused global warming cites a skeptic meteorologist, a chorus of the opposition howls that such meteorologists lack the requisite expertise in climate science.

Peter Gleick’s last sentence in his comment is pretty much what sends the entire notion of man-caused global warming over the cliff of credibility, because his and others’ 20-year+ fixation with marginalizing skeptic scientists and skeptic speakers is such an obvious indication that they do not have confidence in the IPCC’s ability to support itself. The public is not told where skeptics are wrong, we are told to ignore them because they’re on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry.

Problem is, we have yet to see a solitary bit of evidence to support this accusation. Sure, practically every pro-global warming book author and article writer says skeptic opposition mimics old tobacco industry tactics, but who do they end up citing to prove this? All the accusation repetitions ultimately filter back to anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan, who himself never bothers to show us his single bit of smoking gun evidence in its full context, or bothers to say where or how he got it. Think about it for a moment, without this one reason for us to ignore the skeptic scientists, we would then be obligated to listen to them, because that is the responsible thing to do.

So, it’s not up to James Taylor to show us who funds the Heartland Institute, it’s up to Gleick, Gore, Pachari, Oreskes, Mooney, Romm, Gelbspan or any others who want to give it a shot: Stop with the guilt-by-association garbage, SHOW US YOUR SPECIFIC PROOF THAT MONEY WAS GIVEN TO SKEPTIC CLIMATE SCIENTISTS IN EXCHANGE FOR FALSE FABRICATED CLIMATE ASSESSMENTS!

If these folks continue failing to do this, everyone will ultimately realize that we do not have skeptics and the fossil fuel industry conspiring to confuse the public, it is the opposite; a cadre of well-financed, well-organized enviro-activists engaging in character assassination in support of a rather small amount of pro-global warming scientists, with the goal of trying to confuse the public into believing the issue is settled.

I am sure Mr. Taylor does appear to you and your kind to be residing in scientifically alien territory. Why he appears as grotesque to you as you to him.

So you are one of those 77 or so climate scientists that bothered to answer that sham survey of which the results declared 97% of climate scientists agree there is global warming. Wow, such a representative sample.

That you must lean on the clown, Cyruspinkerton, for support rather than science is concrete proof that desperation is setting in.

### The devastating earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand made 2011 the costliest year yet for the insurance industry in terms of natural disaster losses, a leading reinsurance company said Wednesday.

Munich Re AG said in an annual report that insured losses last year totaled $105 billion — exceeding the previous record of $101 billion set in 2005, when losses were swollen by claims from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

The company said the total economic cost last year from natural disasters — including uninsured losses — totaled about $380 billion. That was far above the 2005 record of $220 billion.

Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in March caused overall losses of $210 billion and insured losses of between $35 billion and $40 billion, Munich Re said. That didn’t include the consequences of the subsequent meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which resulted in the evacuation of a wide swath of land.

The second most costly disaster for insurers, at $13 billion, was the February quake that devastated much of the New Zealand city of Christchurch. Overall losses came to $16 billion.

Munich Re noted that last year’s sequence of natural disasters was very rare, and that 2011 brought catastrophes expected only once every 1,000 years or more. Normally, weather-related events are the chief cause of losses, it said.

“Even if it seems hard to believe given recent events, the probability of earthquakes has not increased,” said Peter Hoeppe, the head of Munich Re’s risk research unit.

He added, however, that “these severe earthquakes are timely reminders that the decisions on where to build towns need careful and serious consideration of these risks, especially where certain buildings are concerned, above all nuclear power plants.”

Building codes in earthquake-prone regions need to be made even stricter, he argued.

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And the big finale……

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Severe storms and tornadoes in the United States in late April cost insurers $7.3 billion and led to overall damage worth $15 billion. Hurricane Irene, which hit the Caribbean and U.S. in late August, caused insured losses of $7 billion and total losses of $15 billion.

Still, Munich Re said losses from North Atlantic hurricanes were “moderate” in 2011, with only three major named storms making landfall in the United States.

Regarding scientific opionion, see Anderegg et al – http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract – “we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”

Regarding the moon, its temperature drops to -110 degrees C at night, way way lower than the earth’s night time temperature. That’s because of the earth’s atmosphere and its heat trapping greenhouse effect. The moon’s day time temperature is a lot hotter than that of the earth because as well as trapping heat, the earth’s atmosphere also contains gases that block many of the sun’s rays from reaching the surface – eg. ozone blocks most of the UV radiation.

On the funding of skeptics see this piece from Reuters – http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN1E75Q1ZO20110628 – showing that US scientist Willie Soon received funding from the Kochs, Exxon etc.. He admits this, though of course denies that the funding influenced his work.